OD Design meets specifications thread

[Bertram]

Hi everyone,

I've opened a new topic to permit people to speak out loud about the specification details relative the design notes offered so far, thanks to Danimal for the cool summary.

- Story: we are evil, humans are stupid and deserve to die, we want to make the game feel genuinely evil
- Two sides: Evil keeper against hordes of heroes and rival keepers
- Monsters have their little life and hobbies: each creature perform their preferred activity in the dungeon when they are not killing something
- Start small and go big : progression on the build up of troops along the game, expect to have critters like flies and spiders as your minions on the first levels, and end up commanding a screaming demonic legion.

--> Two sides: Actually, there are something like 5 or 6 sides in the test level AFAIK, and when looking into the portal code logic, every faction can spawn any creature defined in the level file at random with a set of probability rules.
If you want this to happen, we, devs, will need to get to know the following AFAIK:
- The list of creatures for each of the two sides (from weakest to strongest) using the existing creatures for now.

- For now, the rough rules used to be able to spawn them. Please note that we lack reinforced wall support, and lack other room types atm. So I'd like to get rules appliable with what it is working at the moment, if possible. If there could some kind of progression in those rules, it would be cool.
Eg.: If more than 1000 gold available and more than 250 claimed tiles, Orcs are becoming available.

- IMHO, a third independant side, or side-less creatures should be definable. This would make possible to fall on naturally-living creatures to fight and so on.

- Keeper specialization: choose to go down the path of War, Magic or Stealth; each one of them grant access to exclusive creatures, spells, traps and bonus. Ex: do you prefer to be a Mage keeper specializing on Chaos magic or Death magic?, or just became a warlord and storm your enemies with hordes of weak creatures, or why not be sneaky and send a team of high level assassins to destroy choice targets and then banish them back to your dungeon.

- Would need new rooms, traps, spells support, I'll ask about that a bit later.

- Different environments: who though there would be so many biomes underground?; levels will have a different decoration to represent jungles, swamps or other environments depending on the story setting instead of just rocky ground.
- Each environment grants you different creatures, making your army composition dependent on what environment you are.

- This is very cool, btw. We'll need the list of the planned biomes (including the current default one), and the list of creatures for each side for each biome.
For now, we'd implement only the standard ground ones. Things would be much simpler if the biomes can't be mixed as we'd simply apply a different texture on dirt depending on the biome.
But I'd rather ask now. Should the biomes be mixable within the same map? (I think it shouldn't, but well.)

Best regards,

[Danimal]

--> Two sides: Actually, there are something like 5 or 6 sides in the test level AFAIK, and when looking into the portal code logic, every faction can spawn any creature defined in the level file at random with a set of probability rules.
If you want this to happen, we, devs, will need to get to know the following AFAIK:
- The list of creatures for each of the two sides (from weakest to strongest) using the existing creatures for now.

Not really, i will explain: there is the Good side (heroes) and bad side (keepers); on each map you should always find the hero side (1 or more), and maybe other keepers (each one has an assigned color); what i meant is we have humans on one side and keepers in another, by default they are at each other throats. But each keeper is a faction in itself (maybe allied with another keeper color or enemy to all).
Heroes are not real keepers, they cant order digging or drop creatures, but they use their rooms and recieve reinforcements from their portals; they are like some kind of disabled keeper.

Yes, there should be a neutral faction (wandering critters),hostile to everyone, heroes included.

I hope i explained that clearly.

- For now, the rough rules used to be able to spawn them. Please note that we lack reinforced wall support, and lack other room types atm. So I'd like to get rules appliable with what it is working at the moment, if possible

Thats is hard to do with what little we have, just leave it to chance for now

But I'd rather ask now. Should the biomes be mixable within the same map? (I think it shouldn't, but well.)

No, they should be total level conversions, to avoid tiles problems

[Bertram]

Not really, i will explain: there is the Good side (heroes) and bad side (keepers); on each map you should always find the hero side (1 or more), and maybe other keepers (each one has an assigned color); what i meant is we have humans on one side and keepers in another, by default they are at each other throats. But each keeper is a faction in itself (maybe allied with another keeper color or enemy to all).
Heroes are not real keepers, they cant order digging or drop creatures, but they use their rooms and recieve reinforcements from their portals; they are like some kind of disabled keeper.

Yes, there should be a neutral faction (wandering critters),hostile to everyone, heroes included.

I hope i explained that clearly.

Thanks for the explanations. Please correct this if I'm wrong:

- So, technically speaking, there are as many factions as we want, and each factions has got its own set of spawnable creatures.
- Factions can dig and make rooms or can't. That, along with the kind of creatures the faction can spawn, determine whether it is heroes or Keepers.
--> If a faction hasn't got any worker type unit, then It won't be able to dig anything. So the set of spawnable creatures will define this faction capacity.
- There can be faction-less creatures, hostile by default to every other creatures.
We also have creatures that are part of a factions which won't have any portal. This way, we have natural group of creatures that aren't hostile between themselves
but hostile to everything else.
--> I think most of all that is done as it can be seen in the test level, except that the set of spawnable creatures is common for each faction.

@Devs:
---> What we need to add support to, is to be able to determine a different set of creatures you can spawn for each faction in the map level data.

@Danimal:
I still think you should define a default set of spawnable creature per side, I mean for Keepers and for Heroes.

Thats is hard to do with what little we have, just leave it to chance for now

ok.

No, they should be total level conversions, to avoid tiles problems

This is cool and should be easy to add.
@Devs:
--> We need to add a 'Biome' parameter in the map level data.
According to this value, when loading a wall tile, we'll change the texture file sought for the corresponding mesh.
Eg: (out of pure fantasy)

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

Underground:    Jungle:    ....
Dirt            Moss
Water           Green foamed Water
Lava            Lava
Hard            Black Stone
Castle          Spiked walls

But before all that, we desperately need to fix and probably simplify the tileset implementation and relative tile code.

Best regards,

[nido]

Heroes are not real keepers, they cant order digging or drop creatures, but they use their rooms and recieve reinforcements from their portals; they are like some kind of disabled keeper.

If i may ask a question; part of the original dungeon keeper was the threat of heroes digging their way to your keep. Am I to understand this is not to be part of (initial) opendungeons?

[Danimal]

If i may ask a question; part of the original dungeon keeper was the threat of heroes digging their way to your keep. Am I to understand this is not to be part of (initial) opendungeons?

Nido: yes, heroes could tunnel their way to your base, but they always started with a pre-built dungeon and never digged/added new rooms to it, they just guarded their dungeon or roamed around the map looking for cracks to enter into an enemy dungeon. They are in that sense a handicapped keeper. Betram, could that behaviour be included in OD?

I still think you should define a default set of spawnable creature per side, I mean for Keepers and for Heroes.

Actually thats the easiest rigth now, heroes would get adventurers, mages, dwarfs and knigths; the only heroes creatures we have at the moment; and keepers everything else (same spawn pool for all of them). In a far future the specializations and rooms will determinate what creature enters the dungeon so there can be variety for each keeper (AI controlled or not) on a map.
So that means all keepers (except heroes) use the same spawn pool, it would be interesting to be able to change this spawn pool depending on levels, to be able to prederminate what creatures you get based on the level biome. Ex: on volcanic levels you get dragons and demons, while on jungle levels spiders and orcs.

I think you got the rest of the explanation, save one point:

- Factions can dig and make rooms or can't. That, along with the kind of creatures the faction can spawn, determine whether it is heroes or Keepers.

While the heroes are crippled by design we can also have crippled keepers, they use the monster pool but cant build or dig nothing (no workers around or useless/on-strike worker is a good idea).

So to sum it up:
Hero(es) faction(s) cant build, but have pre-build dungeons, and diggers(dwarfs) that tunnel to enemy keepers dungeons, they use their unique Hero spawn pool, they also recieve reinforcements on waves intead of one by one, and are not restricted to rooms or other recruiment requesites. Only their "total number" is their limit (to avoid flooding the map with them or crushing defeat). They can be agressive and seek battle or pasive, only guarding one area.

Keepers can or cant build (i see this "cant" as just a way to make a level more interesting, i guess erasing their worker creation spell is enought to achieve this), all keepers use the same spawn pool (recruiting creatures from the land/biome they are in) but "specialized keepers" can build rooms to attract creatures unique to their specialization no matter the biome.

Neutral creatures just roam the land attacking any other factions (heroes or keepers), they have no dungeon or portals.

I have one question thougth; whats the current creature limit for each keeper? or how many creatures can i have on the test level?

[Bertram]

Hi Danimal nido,

Thanks for the precision!

- About "spawn pools" (I like the naming btw), I'd still suggest to make it definable per team. this would make much more flexible and can support the idea of heroes and villains.
(Thanks for the list btw!)
- The Keeper's specialization should be dealt with in a second time, IMHO, once we have something like 70% of this all done in the code.

So Dwarfs should be able to dig, but not claim or deposit gold, for instance.
I'd propose this, I'd add boolean parameters for the following actions in the creatures definition data:
- CanDig
- CanClaim
- CanDepositGold

- Also, I see a good point about having a new behaviour for heroes portals: To burst several heroes' creatures at once, to create the wave effect.

- Last but not least, and this can be implemented later on, we'll need a Hero AI, that start making Dwarfs dig, when it thinks it has enough creatures to look for troubles.

All this is looking soo cool. And this is bringing the point where we'll need to think about making level file data extensible, but that's another tricky point. (I'll open a new thread for that).

Now, for the prioritization of the tasks:
- First, we need to add support to enable/disable "CanDig", "CanClaim" and "CanDepositGold" in the creature definition. From what I could see in the creature definition and action class,
one can only define whether a creature is a worker or not, thus enabling all those three actions at once or not.
- Add support for a different spawn pool for each "Seat" (Players/AI/Team names in the code)
- Once spawn pools are working fine. We can finish the portal spawning point, by adding a wave effect parameter to it.
--> In fact, the spawn portal should have delays, number of creatures spawned, and maybe a few other metrics unhardcoded and put in the map data.
- In parallel, add the biome parameter that permits to change the texture of wall tile according its value. (But only once we've got at least enough textures to have a complete other biome.)

I think I should open a new thread where we should put in a centralized point what tasks are to be done.

I have one question though; whats the current creature limit for each keeper? or how many creatures can i have on the test level?

Creatures are put in a vector in the game map class. I haven't seen any hardcoded or any check about the creatures number in the code so far. So, I'd say there is none.
Now, maybe you were speaking about the number of creatures the portal will spawn, the algorithm can be seen here:
https://github.com/Bertram25/OpenDungeo ... al.cpp#L50

In short and from what I understood, the formula is: [(15 - num_creatures) / 15]^1.5 *100 = % of chance to spawn a new creature. This also means you can't have more than 15 living creatures per team when relying exclusively on the portal.
Eg: When you've got 9 creatures, you have ~25% chance to spawn a new one when the portal timer has expired. The portal timer is randomly set to be between 15 and 30 turns (~seconds).

Best regards,

[nido]

yes, heroes could tunnel their way to your base, but they always started with a pre-built dungeon and never digged/added new rooms to it, they just guarded their dungeon or roamed around the map looking for cracks to enter into an enemy dungeon. They are in that sense a handicapped keeper.

I understand. Thank you for your clearification. If I may make a suggestion, I think this could be handled in the hero-keeper AI by not implementing the behaviour there rather then checks later on in the code. Either regular AIs need to devine know whether or not they can build rooms anyhow (not having any buildable rooms is an easy and available clue to this effect though, i would guess), or they would need to be specially chosen ai's anyhow.

So Dwarfs should be able to dig, but not claim or deposit gold, for instance.

If I am not mistaken, at the moment, for digging and claiming tiles, the code checks an isWorker function.

Whether or not gold can be deposited (by which i assume, be dumped in the treasury) is dependant whether or not the creature can dig gold at all.

Whether the creature can dig gold depends whether or not he has reached his maxgold.

Taking your example, we could make the dwarf a worker with a maxgold of 0; this would disable him, and with him the entire hero faction, to dig (and thus deposit) gold as in the original dungeon keeper, which I assume your intention in this example was (please correct me if I am wrong).

Claiming is at the moment a default idle action of a worker. this could at the moment be "turned off" by giving a worker something to do.
We could also address the 'not claim' part of his functionality by making sure the heroes always give him a job. To that extend, please consider my next lines. The only case this would exclude would be when you wall yourself in entirely and the heroes have slaughtered every tile of diggable earth not claimed by you. I don't think the concequences of having the heroes start claiming tiles at this point would be that bad. I could be misitaken though and would like your input.

Last but not least, and this can be implemented later on, we'll need a Hero AI, that start making Dwarfs dig, when it thinks it has enough creatures to look for troubles.

Would it not be prudent to have these heroes always be brade enough to find trouble? Espescially when you implement wave behaviour in the hero gates. The waiting to have enough creatures to look for trouble part is already done; presumably in an arch-typical pub in the middle of nowhere right next to the ominous entrance to your dungeon.

[quote]Keepers can or cant build (i see this "cant" as just a way to make a level more interesting, i guess erasing their worker creation spell is enought to achieve this)[quote]
If i may make a suggestion, having a keeper ai who won't dig may be a better solution, this would still allow them to create workers to dig gems for money to pay their creatures. For your 'neutreal' creatures, a keeper ai content to do absolutely nothing would allow that faction to still fit in with the other factions.




In relation to the spawn pools, I am unsure of the current status on that I am about to suggest, so apologies if I am bikeshedding.
So... I would like to suggest to have the ability to define, per level, the number of which creatures can be gotten in total, as well as a list of creatures that can be gotten per keeper.

Defining a total limit for spawnable creatures will protect the game from becomming unhandleable when we implement functionality like torture rooms or scavenger rooms when players decide to "catch 'em all".

The screening afterwards would allow for segregation when desired by level designers. For example, imagine a level where you cannot attract researching creatures and are stuck without any means to train your creatures until the dojo is researched. Thus, you must obtain one by different means in order to actually fight the heroes in their fortress. Or a level where you must fight two keepers at once whoes creatures are all natural enemies.

[Bertram]

I understand. Thank you for your clearification. If I may make a suggestion, I think this could be handled in the hero-keeper AI by not implementing the behaviour there rather then checks later on in the code. Either regular AIs need to devine know whether or not they can build rooms anyhow (not having any buildable rooms is an easy and available clue to this effect though, i would guess), or they would need to be specially chosen ai's anyhow.

If i may make a suggestion, having a keeper ai who won't dig may be a better solution, this would still allow them to create workers to dig gems for money to pay their creatures. For your 'neutreal' creatures, a keeper ai content to do absolutely nothing would allow that faction to still fit in with the other factions.

True, and even more flexible. I'm seconding those ideas.

Taking your example, we could make the dwarf a worker with a maxgold of 0; this would disable him, and with him the entire hero faction, to dig (and thus deposit) gold as in the original dungeon keeper, which I assume your intention in this example was (please correct me if I am wrong).

This can done indeed. But it does look a bit hackish to me. So, IMHO, I'd later add actual support to not deposit gold (and not gather it at the same time) as an actual parameter.

Claiming is at the moment a default idle action of a worker. this could at the moment be "turned off" by giving a worker something to do.
We could also address the 'not claim' part of his functionality by making sure the heroes always give him a job. To that extend, please consider my next lines. The only case this would exclude would be when you wall yourself in entirely and the heroes have slaughtered every tile of diggable earth not claimed by you. I don't think the concequences of having the heroes start claiming tiles at this point would be that bad. I could be misitaken though and would like your input.

Now i must disagree. Preventing a creature from claiming a tile by making it 'move' for instance is not a good idea. This would make things very hard to follow in term of code(/script?) intertwined management and this is subject to race conditions by design, if I may.
IMHO, we have to add support to be able to disable the 'claim tile' behaviour. The code change is rather easy to do and this would make things much more straight forward instead of the introduction such kind of workarounds.

So... I would like to suggest to have the ability to define, per level, the number of which creatures can be gotten in total, as well as a list of creatures that can be gotten per keeper.

- The number of creature in total parameter is a good idea, and I'd put this parameter per player/AI, so be able to tweak the difficulty.
- The list of spawnable creatures per keeper is to me something we agree with already.

Best regards,

[Danimal]

i dont agree about the creature cap, in the original DK the max number of creatures was decided by how many portals you controlled; meaning that having 1 portal gave you a max of 15-20 creatures, and each new controlled portal would give 5-10 more. Thus making the portal a strategical resource to adquiere, also, going above that number by taking workarounds was one of the many fun things of the game (like converting heroes or rising an undead legion), that option should be left there and let the player decide if they want or not to use it. I also think this wont affect any hypotetical multiplayer match since those tend to be decided quickly and such an strategy is too conservative and slow paced to be sucessful.

[Bertram]

in the original DK the max number of creatures was decided by how many portals you controlled; meaning that having 1 portal gave you a max of 15-20 creatures, and each new controlled portal would give 5-10 more. Thus making the portal a strategical resource to adquiere, also, going above that number by taking workarounds was one of the many fun things of the game (like converting heroes or rising an undead legion), that option should be left there and let the player decide if they want or not to use it.

It's indeed a strong point in term of strategy. I must say that when I talked about a max number, I was rather speaking of a max number of creature an AI would have, to avoid getting to the point where you get overwhelmed by its creatures.
Thus, this limit should be optional, following what you said.

[nido]

Taking your example, we could make the dwarf a worker with a maxgold of 0; this would disable him, and with him the entire hero faction, to dig (and thus deposit) gold as in the original dungeon keeper, which I assume your intention in this example was (please correct me if I am wrong).

This can done indeed. But it does look a bit hackish to me. So, IMHO, I'd later add actual support to not deposit gold (and not gather it at the same time) as an actual parameter.

I am sorry but I disagree. Without the parameter, there are two states in which a creature can be in regards to gold. Either it can mine gold, or it can't because it has already reached its maxgold. The nature of 0-indexed numbers makes that we can always* put a creature in a position forever unable to mine. Also, this functionality is already working.

Adding an explicit parameter gives us four states to keep in mind in regard to gold. namely can mine, has >0 maxgold, can't mine, >0 maxgold, can mine, 0 maxgold, can't mine, 0 maxgold. three of these conditions will render the creature unable to mine gold, one of these is when the 'canmine' parameter is on; and whilst two of these conditions shouldn't be used, they can accidentally be created regardless. I do think this behaviour should be mentioned in the documentation of the maxgold variable, as it is a design decision to keep in mind when doing gold related stuff. I humbly request you reconsider adding this parameter

Now i must disagree. Preventing a creature from claiming a tile by making it 'move' for instance is not a good idea. This would make things very hard to follow in term of code(/script?) intertwined management and this is subject to race conditions by design, if I may.
IMHO, we have to add support to be able to disable the 'claim tile' behaviour. The code change is rather easy to do and this would make things much more straight forward instead of the introduction such kind of workarounds.

You raise a valid point to which i concede.

i dont agree about the creature cap, in the original DK the max number of creatures was decided by how many portals you controlled; meaning that having 1 portal gave you a max of 15-20 creatures, and each new controlled portal would give 5-10 more.

I think your information is incorrect. In the original Dungeon Keeper, the maximum number of creatures a keeper can get from his portal is defined in in the dungeon keeper folder levels\MAP${mapnumber}.TXT per keeper. If you still say additional portals grow your arsenal I would like to ask how long it would take for the new creatures to arrive after catching the second portal, because I have had dungeon keeper running for 8 hours based on someone else alluring to portals working as you state (my favourite metagame in DK is 'get as much creatures as possible w/o casualties', hence the experience). However, in Dungeon Keeper 2, portals do work as you describe.

Thus making the portal a strategical resource to adquiere, also, going above that number by taking workarounds was one of the many fun things of the game (like converting heroes or rising an undead legion), that option should be left there and let the player decide if they want or not to use it. I also think this wont affect any hypotetical multiplayer match since those tend to be decided quickly and such an strategy is too conservative and slow paced to be sucessful.

There still was a strategical significance to portals, especially if they were out of your way and could be cought by others. Nevertheless, the experience of absolutely no growth in my creature count when i performed a feat of particular daring in capturing an ai's portal before him was underwhelming. I would not be opposed to having a configurable max_creatures_per_portal, or max_creatures_first_portal and max_creatures_other_portals or something similar.

I must say that when I talked about a max number, I was rather speaking of a max number of creature an AI would have, to avoid getting to the point where you get overwhelmed by its creatures.

Are you talking about a total cap on enemy units, regardless of faction? or a per-faction limit? To the second, I like to extend your idea to the player keeper as well. The first I feel ambiguous. Firstly, the per-faction cap would already create _an_ limit on the total number of creatures. Secondly, getting overwhelmed is one of the risks of digging yourself in a small patch of land. I think it is a valid strategic concern we needen't lessen. Though if no per-faction limit will be implemented, this total enemy cap may still be useful



* I concede it is actually possible to have an int not be zero by, for example, defining '0' as INT_MAX+1 or just adding 1 to the number which is input into the parameter though this would not be trivial nor obvious. Though we could assert the situation; and I suggest we do if you decide to proceed with adding the parameter to catch this being defined acidentally.

[Bertram]

I am sorry but I disagree. Without the parameter, there are two states in which a creature can be in regards to gold. Either it can mine gold, or it can't because it has already reached its maxgold. The nature of 0-indexed numbers makes that we can always* put a creature in a position forever unable to mine. Also, this functionality is already working.

Adding an explicit parameter gives us four states to keep in mind in regard to gold. namely can mine, has >0 maxgold, can't mine, >0 maxgold, can mine, 0 maxgold, can't mine, 0 maxgold. three of these conditions will render the creature unable to mine gold, one of these is when the 'canmine' parameter is on; and whilst two of these conditions shouldn't be used, they can accidentally be created regardless. I do think this behaviour should be mentioned in the documentation of the maxgold variable, as it is a design decision to keep in mind when doing gold related stuff. I humbly request you reconsider adding this parameter

You raised a valid point here. Now it's my proposal that sounds like a bad workaround. All right, let's not add the CanDigGold parameter and use 0 max gold creatures.

I'll add more. I've checked the code and it's possible to set the danceRate (used to claim) and or the digRate to 0. For now, when set to 0, it doesn't prevent the unit from trying to dig and/or trying to claim unsuccessfully, but I should be able to add a check for that and prevent such action when their rate is at 0.
I would even say that the isWorker parameter is useless since you should be able to trigger the desired behaviour through the use of 0 or >0 rate parameters. What do you think?

Are you talking about a total cap on enemy units, regardless of faction? or a per-faction limit? To the second, I like to extend your idea to the player keeper as well. The first I feel ambiguous. Firstly, the per-faction cap would already create _an_ limit on the total number of creatures. Secondly, getting overwhelmed is one of the risks of digging yourself in a small patch of land. I think it is a valid strategic concern we needen't lessen. Though if no per-faction limit will be implemented, this total enemy cap may still be useful

I'd like to add a per-faction total creature limit that should be set to something more than enough for a normal play, and be used to debilitate the AI when a not too great challenge is desired.
I like the idea of parameters for max creatures per first and other portal, too. Let's add that.

Best regards,

[Elvano]

Might be perhaps a late response, but I've been told that OD would take place around 1410.

Though, if we'd make it happed a century earlier, the storyline could take place amidst:

• The great famine which ended the growth and prosperity of the middle ages (1315–1322) (losses: several millions)
• The start of the hundred year's war (1337 - 1453) (losses: 3,000,000)
• The Black Death (aka the black plague) (1347–1351) (losses: 1/3 of the european population)
• The Peasants' Revolt as result of the Black Death and High Wartaxes (hundred year's war) (1381) (losses: included in the war)

This was really an age of misery, and it wouldn't be hard to add these historical values to our own story line.

[paul424]

Kajuto !
Help !
Hilfe !
Pomocy !
Pomoć !

[Danimal]

Well, you see, we want to be fantastical, but nothing stop us to be the cause of all that miseries in our pseudo-fantastical world .
Lots of missions could be crafted with the objective to create those event in our world! Also lets try not to be too realistic, realism or historical lessons have to be handled very carefully as not to bore players.

[Elvano]

Also lets try not to be too realistic, realism or historical lessons have to be handled very carefully as not to bore players.

Assassin's Creed: Over a Billion $ profit ea title =p

We can be the cause or take advantage of these events.
But that you claim history is boring is a bit offending D;
History is the bundle of millions of stories, some not that much interesting but others more than amazing.
Just look at it as a chance to take advantage of the good stories and rewrite the ones less exciting.

Afterall, when we clearly notify the player of this, we do not need to be 100% accurate with known versions of the past =p

[Danimal]

I like history, a lot, but i find it rather hard to be historically accurate with orcs, trolls and the like roamming around; but i agree with you if used properly it can be a really good drive. do you have any ideas of to use it?

[charlie]

I like history, a lot, but i find it rather hard to be historically accurate with orcs, trolls and the like roamming around; but i agree with you if used properly it can be a really good drive. do you have any ideas of to use it?

Orcs, trolls and the like are no more disprovable than God. We just haven't unearthed any evidence for them yet beyond fictional ancient literature.

[Elvano]

I like history, a lot, but i find it rather hard to be historically accurate with orcs, trolls and the like roamming around; but i agree with you if used properly it can be a really good drive. do you have any ideas of to use it?

Orcs, trolls and the like are no more disprovable than God. We just haven't unearthed any evidence for them yet beyond fictional ancient literature.

Well since we're using dungeons to keep them at it's only natural the people don't know about them. And those who do keep their mouth shut (or get burned at the stake).
It'd be perfect to play a part in the "behind the scenes" of these events.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Catharism (there being 2 gods; good vs evil) was alsosomething of that era

[nido]

P.S. I forgot to mention that Catharism (there being 2 gods; good vs evil) was alsosomething of that era

The devil is a catholic candidate for the 'evil' god. I think we elsewhere refer to olden gods of sorts, but that may be dungeon keeper proper.

[Elvano]

Nido and I have been brainstorming a bit in what direction we could go.I'll post a summary of the big lines we've come up with so far below

The world of man is in chaos (see above), so we take advantage of these events to try and take over the world.
Sadly it appears our brethern had the same thing in mind, so we end up looking for the ultimate weapon.
We need to collect (lost) relics in order to find the weapon. (each relic can give a bonus to a specific branch in the keeper specialisation tree)
Sadly it seems that some humans are also looking for the weapon (behind the scenes)
We find the weapon (pandora's box?) and use it to release the black death on our enemies.

It's basicly a very short version of what we've come up with.
(research not included)

Let me know if I forgot something important, nido

EDIT: Funny bit; people believed that relics could cure them from this plague. Wouldn't it be sweet ironie that it were the relics which caused it in the first place? =p

[Danimal]

i would add some changes to that:
- we plunge the world of man in chaos little by little, they are doing more or less fine until we get to the action, there is an unstable balance between good and evil, corruption running deep in the men realms.

- i have been thinking and while specialization should be fully accesible in multiplayer maps, in single campaign something should limit the levels you are able to advance in it, and there enter your relics, each relic allows you to research one more level on specialization. That way the new players start with basics rooms the first levels of the game and as they capture relics on the world map they grow stronger with the increased access to the specialization tree. That way the relics have a story and gameplay role.

- the plague seems to be your limit storywise, lets expand that, the plague is a first goal/consequense (opening the box) for your actions, and we will achieve it along the way, but our objective should change to destroy the Ligth Gods that are pulling the strings on the men realms and corrupting them so a "holy cleansing" of the human race begins, wiping out all other races as well, and of course they will appear as their saviors. (and we are supposed to be the evil ones?),the humans are collecting the relics for unknown purpose (later revealed, the ligth gods want to cause the plague on all races except men), the "Deep Lords" just for their power; so once we get them all the plague starts and the ligth gods see how their prospective human crusaders die by the millions, they enrage and start directly attacking you. On that moment our objective changes to first running away and next destroying them and becoming ruler of both the land and heavens.

So to recap:
-We are just born as a Deep Lord, we start conquering lands (first levels, tutorials)
-We hear of the relics that have great power, and start hunting for them (midgame levels, introducing specializations with first relic)
-We get them, activate them in a gamemap that force us to defend against hordes of heroes and other Deep Lords, and unleash the plage; the ligth gods along with their fanatic pet human kingdoms directly declare war on us.(mid-late levels)
-When all seems lost we learn of an ancient divine superweapon (the Godslayer) hidden away in an ancient and long forgotten underground super fortress, get it and start a war on the heavens strongholds(last levels)

As you can see, a bit of conspiration really spices up the whole story, the "we start the plague, THE END" lets a lot to be desired as an ending, its evil but not enougth. Also, please lets not stick to real event dates, lets cause all of them over that poor continent but in the same timeframe if possible, i find it hard to add dark humor to missions (or even some beliable contuinity) when they happen decades or centuriess later. A year apart or two is fine.

[Danimal]

Elvano, did you decide anything else about the story?

[Elvano]

We have decided nothing, danimal.
We just did a bit o' brainstorming and a whole lot of reasearch.

[Danimal]

Dont take it like that; its just that talking is cheap and you have barely posted anything lately, i wanted to pull your tongue .
When a more complete game is available adding new campaigns should be easy so everyone just develops their owns. It cant hurt a game to have a few of them just on release date.